Wednesday, July 30, 2014

The one thing that CEE businesses don’t get that North American and British Businesses excel at

By Paul Chen

User experience (UX) and Customer relations Management
(CRM) are really hot fields of expertise
these days. UX developers even earn more
than web developers. And Base CRM is one
of the more successful startups based in Krakow, raising over $10 million in their
last rounds. With the amount of similar
apps, software, and hardware out there, making the experience for a user as
pleasant and logical is more important than ever. Good UX and CRM will keep your users loyal
and it will make them into an advocate for the use of your product or service. And being able to anticipate what the
customer wants or needs is one of the holy grails of the business world. Word of mouth is always stronger than
watching an advert. And because it is a friendly
recommendation, you are more likely to trust it from the start. As a result, you save on customer acquisition
costs. And to get to the point that the
customer will trust and like your product to that “I like it because my friends
like it” level can be quite hard and expensive.
Therefore, as a product or service developer you would want the
experience to be as pleasant as possible.
Most companies hire people with psychology, cognitive science, and IT
degrees.

Many businesses be it SME’s or national chains in the
CEE region are doing UX and CRM with their services and products very
well. However, I would argue that they
will never reach the scale of a business with a slightly lower quality offer
from North America or Britain. The one
simple thing is that these users or customers are human beings. And humans have a whole range of emotions and
many times those emotions will override their sense of need or want. If you make me angry I will just take my
business elsewhere. These are concepts
that are part of every western customers psyche. This concept is something that is still
missing from the business environment in the CEE region. I was talking to a sales manager of a
software firm in the Czech Republic a while back, and I was asking him how he
approaches his clients. What he told me
is that he just cares about what the client needs and how it would improve his
bottom line. I was trying to tell him
that humanizing the customer and making the customer feel that you care about
him or her would increase the likelihood of success of closing the deal. He just wasn’t understanding it.

Historical Background

You probably seen the old pictures of people standing
in long lines during communism just to get regular things like bread, fruit,
and soap. You also probably seen
pictures of empty shelves in stores as well.
Back during communism the allocation of resources and goods just wasn’t
as efficient or customer oriented as they are today. People were put on waiting lists for a
Trabant, an East German car. There is a
popular board game in Poland called Kolejka which translates a line to get
something. It reminds Polish people how
tough it was back then. As a result, the
shop keeper feels a tremendous amount of power.
Kind of like the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld. If you make the keeper angry, “no soup for
you!”

The store keeper becomes a sort of decider of whether
you get to have the good or not, and if you are nice to her, she might let you
in on future shipments. Consequently,
they can be as rude or unpleasant as they want and you can’t do anything about
it.

Jumping back to 2014.
Today many of the same shopkeepers still work at these shops, but the
thing is that the situation has changed but the mentality hasn’t. Now, there are plenty of stores with continuously
full inventories to choose from. If you
don’t like the service from one place, you go to the other. The concept of service with a smile is quite
alien to them. I will hold out my hand
to get change but the cashier will insist on throwing the change on these silly
trays making it hard to take my change back.
Do I have cooties? The Soup Nazi
is funny because he is contrary to how service industry personnel behaves in
the West. However, in Krakow it is the
norm. This phenomenon is not only
specific to Poland but in the Czech Republic and Hungary as well. The thing that makes me sad is that the young
employees are learning these bad habits as well.

For example, I was walking with a big group of about
20 startup colleagues looking for a place to eat.
Granted it is a bit late in the evening.
With me were successful business people with a lot of money and
influence. Will not drop names but if
they read this post they will know who they are. So we were turned town restaurant after
restaurant because they were closing shortly.
It felt like Joseph and Mary looking for an inn. In the West, this would be unheard of. As long as there are customers, the
restaurant or business would stay open.
You don’t kick out your customers even if it is after closing. You want to make sure your customers are
happy with the shopping and dining experience.
The point is that had the restaurant stayed open just an hour more to
serve us, it would have earned enough profit to cover the next day at
least. Plus the staff would have been
tipped quite well, probably doubled their intake that day. However, ‘the customer is here for us’
mentality allowed an awesome earning opportunity to slip through their
hands.

I understand how hard it is to work in the service
industry. I helped my family run a
successful motel by the shores of New Jersey and I have worked as a waiter as
well as a supermarket cashier in the past.
Some customers can be really unpleasant.
However, as my father always
said, ”Customer is king.”

Part of the reason for the worker apathy is that the
wages are not very high. So there aren’t
any incentive to smile or enjoy their work.
Another reason is that in the CEE region, people are not taught to feel
responsible for their actions. Because
you are punished greatly for your mistakes, people feel the less I do, the less
trouble I will have. It is almost more
preferable to be, ‘just another brick in the wall.

People complain why are we not living at the levels of
our Western counterparts. Or why hasn’t
Poland had a big success yet. I would
offer that a lot of it has to do with what goes on in your heads. No matter how great your product or service
is, you will never close the deal or make the sale if your customer is annoyed. One of my American friends joked the other
night that he was going to create a really disruptive startup here in Krakow
and it is called… wait for it…. Service.

Why should the CEE especially Poland care?

With the rise of the Chinese middle class there are
all of a sudden a large amount of rich people wanting to leave China and
travel. A large part of them would like
to travel to Europe. Now places like
London and Paris have already established a strong brand so they have no
problems getting tourists. Germany has
good beer and tons of composers of classical music as well as Karl Marx. Austria and Swtizerland have the Alps. Budapest has always had good relations to the
Chinese community living there so they are good. In China, Prague has also built quite a
following. You ask any Chinese person
about Poland….. you will get mostly shoulder shrugs. Based on what I, as an Asian have experienced
thus far, the future does not bode well.
So Poland has to level up their customer service game big time. Treating them well is important especially
now. You have a clean slate to start making wonderful impressions. You might want to make getting a
Visa easy for them as well. You want to create a really good atmosphere
and make sure they have fun. An insider’s
tip, a good friend’s recommendation is worth way more in China than in the
west. So the question Poland has to ask
itself is, do you want to have a piece of the over $100 billion Chinese tourism
pie or are you simply too busy and want to close up shop because it is getting
late?

Thank you for reading another one of my posts done just for you! If you liked what you read please share it by using one of the buttons up top and check out other posts in this blog. I don’t want you to miss out on future posts so please follow me on Twitter@Eurodude23. If you haven’t done it already, please like my fan page byclicking here! See you next time!

2 comments:

The level of customer service in the UK and the US is absolutely appalling.

UX and CRM are euphemisms to avoid customer churning and enhance revenue flows. I spend hours every week attempting to understand the tricks and traps of business offerings, from Airlines, ISP providers, banks, investment houses, insurance companies - everybody.One of the joys of Krakow is being treated like a valued customer when I check into a hotel when I arrive.

Please like me on Facebook.

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Hello readers, My name is Paul Chen and welcome to K’Sup. My goal is to provide you an English language based blog on the events as well as highlight some of the enterprises who are trying to get their spot on the map as well as to archive the on-going activities at the same time do some trend-spotting. I hope you will find K’Sup both informative and inspirational. The name K’Sup is a combination of K for Krakow and S for start and UP. ‘Sup is colloquial for what’s up in American slang.